Ruling Passions

Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America

Edited by Richard R. John

Publication Year: 2006

In recent years, the Journal of Policy History has emerged as a major venue for scholarship on American policy history in the period after 1900. Indeed, it is for this reason that it is often praised as the leading outlet for scholarship on American political history in the world. Only occasionally, however, has it featured essays on the early republic, the Civil War, or the post–Civil War era. And when it has, the essays have often focused on partisan electioneering rather than on governmental institutions. The rationale for this special issue of the Journal of Policy History is to expand the intellectual agenda of policy history backward in time, so as to embrace more fully the history of governmental institutions in the period before 1900. The six essays in this volume contain much that will be new even for specialists in nineteenth-century American policy history, yet they are written in a style that is intended to be accessible to college undergraduates and historians unfamiliar with the period.

Front Cover

Copyright Page

Contents

Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America

In recent years, the Journal of Policy History has emerged as a major venue
for scholarship on American policy history in the period after 1900. Indeed, it is for this reason that it is often praised as the leading outlet
for scholarship on American political history in the world. Only occasionally, however, has it featured essays on the early republic, the Civil ...

Institutional Reality in the Age of Slavery: Taxation and Democracy in the States

On August 13, 1782, Alexander Hamilton complained to Robert Morris
about the deplorable condition of politics in the state of New York, and
especially the condition of taxation. Morris had appointed Hamilton as
receiver of continental taxes for New York, meaning that Hamilton was
in charge of collecting New York’s share of the “requisitions” of Congress. ...

The Politics of Procurement: Military Origins of Bureaucratic Autonomy

No U.S. history textbook mentions Robert Allen, George H. Crosman, John H. Dickerson, Thomas Swords, or Stewart Van Vliet. Yet in certain
respects they were five of the most important government officials in the
nineteenth-century United States. Each was a high-ranking officer in the
Quartermaster’s Department, a bureau of the U.S. army entrusted with ...

Promotion, Competition, Captivity: The Political Economy of Coal

So proclaimed the president of Pennsylvania’s Pequa Railroad and Improvement Company
in 1849. The importance of coal, the official explained, lay in its utility as
an energy source, for which he hailed it as unsurpassed: coal was
“’hoarded labor’”—a “treasure reserved by nature to promote and perfect ...

Patent Politics: Intellectual Property, the Railroad Industry, and the Problem of Monopoly

As winter descended on Washington in December 1878, the Forty-fifth
Congress gathered for what promised to be a hectic third and final session. Emotions ran high. In this era, Congress habitually reserved much
of its business for these brief, intense “lame duck” sessions that fell
between the election of legislators in November and the adjournment of ...

Protecting Small Savers: The Political Economy of Economic Security

Admitting, then, that it is eminently desirable to reduce the action
of the organized public force to the minimum . . . shall we not say
that government can not relieve itself from the necessity of frequent and minute interferences with industry in any other way to
so great an extent as by, 1st, insisting on the thorough primary ...

Did Insecure Property Rights Slow Economic Development? Some Lessons from Economic History

Not long ago, a 43-year-old Wonder Bread deliveryman named John
Dugger logged on to eBay and, as people sometimes do these days,
bought himself a house. Not a shabby one, either. Nine rooms,
three stories, rooftop patio, walls of solid stonework—it wasn’t quite
a castle, but it put to shame the modest redbrick ranch house ...

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